Autumn is ending. I feel the seasons change each year. I watch for the signs of winter, wait for it; the gentler touch of grey daylight, the taste of frost in the morning. I feel the seasons change around me, I feel the cold come, and imagine myself becoming whole.

I caught the last flight out of Melbourne before the city’s fourth lockdown fell and watched this last autumn end while quarantining from my home in Adelaide. The Delta variant of COVID-19 seems to escalate quickly but the signs of the virus can take weeks to show, even though it may already be in your system. I spent the last weeks of the season waiting for signs of the virus but instead watching the end of autumn, an autumn that seemed warmer and drier than most.